Jonathan Hill

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Mar
3

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The Darkness Permission to Land Review

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Artist: The Darkness
Album: Permission to Land
Genre(s): Rock
Subgenres(s): Hard Rock
Released: 2003
Length: 38 minutes
Language(s): English
Label(s): Atlantic

Track List:

01. Black Shuck
02. Get Your Hands off My Woman
03. Growing on Me
04. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
05. Love is Only a Feeling
06. Givin’ Up
07. Stuck in a Rut
08. Friday Night
09. Love on the Rocks No Ice
10. Holding My Own

Darkness Permission to Land Cover

The Darkness Permission to Land Review

Permission to Land is the over the top debut album by The Darkness that features the flag song and lead single I Believe in a Thing Called Love that they quickly and deservingly became known for. The album throws back to the hard rock sound of the 70’s and 80’s, while overflowing with memorable guitar riffs and solos, audible bass (somewhat of a rarity in rock music), and the outrageous vocal talents of Justin Hawkins. The drums, while not getting as much of the spotlight, provide a solid backing to each song and have a more noticeable presence in the power ballads and during the bridges and breaks of the louder songs.

In addition to standard rock instrumentation, there are some incredibly brief and overly subtle uses of a keyboard on Get Your Hands Off My Woman and Holding My Own, a barely audible piano in Friday Night (which also features a low, quiet purring noise) and an acoustic guitar that shimmers on Love is Only a Feeling.

Hawkins’ voice stays firmly in the falsetto range for the majority of the album and isn’t afraid to flex his vocal cords to show off his abilities. There are some offbeat moments as well, such as on the albums opener, Black Shuck, in which he alternates between high notes most women couldn’t reach and a snarling tone before jumping back into the style that he has become known for. He later performs a 10 second shriek-slash-gargling noise that sounds like it came straight from the bowels of Hell itself.

His voice is pushed right to the limits on Stuck in a Rut (listen from the 2.40 marker) and the lyrics throughout this song (and sometimes others) become incomprehensible amidst his ear piercing performances. In between all of this, he somehow manages to find time to break off to perform a manic laugh that makes you think he’s fallen right out of his tree.

As you can judge from some of the song titles alone, lyrical themes revolve largely around love, making love, women, a mythical creature on Black Shuck and probably the most, if not only, upbeat song about using heroin I’ve ever heard (Givin’ Up).

With all the catchy, sing along moments and guitar solos combined with the fun loving, lively approach to both composition and performance, this is easily everything you’d want to hear on a rock album and doesn’t fail to deliver on anything.

External Links:

The Darkness Homepage
The Darkness on Wikipedia | Permission to Land on Wikipedia
The Darkness on Discogs | Permission to Land on Discogs

Feb
24

By

Andrew WK I Get Wet Review

Category: Music Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

Artist: Andrew WK
Album: I Get Wet
Genre(s): Rock
Subgenres(s): Hard Rock
Released: 2001
Length: 35 minutes
Language(s): English
Label(s): Island

Track List:

01. It’s Time to Party
02. Party Hard
03. Girls Own Love
04. Ready to Die
05. Take it Off
06. I Love NYC
07. She is Beautiful
08. Party Til You Puke
09. Fun Night
10. Got to Do It
11. I Get Wet
12. Don’t Stop Living in the Red

Andrew WK I Get Wet Cover

Andrew WK I Get Wet Review

I Get Wet is a short collection of non-stop, hyperactive party anthems by an extreme extrovert named Andrew WK, who draws stylistically from 80’s hard rock and the glam rock scene while fusing it with the speed and simplicity of punk rock. The average length of each song isn’t much over 3 minutes and most of them barely take a moment to slow down.

The music is dominated by the guitar and has keyboard and piano lines playing alongside it with thumping hard rock drums not far behind, whereas the bass is pushed underneath all of this and you’ll have to listen intensely if you want even a small chance of hearing it. The album is accompanied by an overly sleek production style where everything is loud, fast and repetitive, leaving little space for variation. This might sound negative but when put into practice it has a surprisingly positive outcome, although it’s worth noting that this could have just as easily been the downfall of the album.

Most of the lyrics are straight forward and are presented largely in the form of mantras and shout along anthems, all of which will get firmly lodged in your head for weeks after listening to them. Themes strongly revolve around partying to your last breath, women (Girls Own Love and She is Beautiful), motivation (Got to Do It and Don’t Stop Living in the Red) and more partying.

There are two oddities that break away from the established formula for the lyrics. The first is about killing people in Ready to Die and the other is I Get Wet, which seems to have been written from a woman’s perspective but is barked non-stop almost entirely by Andrew WK for the duration of the song and you can’t possibly keep count of many times the title line is repeated. It does feature female vocals for the last part of the song, which are probably there to break up the snarling and yelling voices momentarily.

At the end of the day I Get Wet is a big, loud, straight forward, over the top party album that lacks any form of subtlety where you don’t need to engage your brain but you will get hours of fun out of it so long as your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek.

External Links:

Andrew WK Homepage
Andrew WK on Wikipedia | I Get Wet on Wikipedia
Andrew WK on Discogs | I Get Wet on Discogs

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